Animal Spirits and Gas Prices

Is a 9-cent drop enough to ignite our “animal spirits?” The 9-cent decrease refers to the average national price of a gallon of regular gasoline. And “animal spirits” is the optimism that leads to more buying and investing.

During the 1930s Great Depression, British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) said that statistics such as lower interest rates could theoretically stimulate economic activity. However, to generate growth, we also need “animal spirits.”

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Elaine Schwartz has spent her career sharing the interesting side of economics. At the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she has been honored through an Endowed Chair in Economics and the History Department chairmanship. At the same time, she developed curricula and wrote several books including Understanding Our Economy (originally published by Addison Wesley as Economics Our American Economy) and Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). Elaine has also written in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press) and was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom.” Beyond the classroom, she has presented Econ 101 ½ talks and led
workshops for the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the National Council on Economic Education and for the Concord Coalition.